Rise Of American Conductors It Used To Be Common Knowledge That Only Europe Could Produce A Musician To Conduct The Best Orchestras. But Times Have Changed.

January 11, 1987|By HOWARD REICH, Chicago Tribune

Slowly, quietly, and utterly without fanfare, a revolution has swept the great concert halls of America.

Though the insurgents have not yet seized all the power, they have dramatically shaken up the status quo: American conductors, for decades denied the opportunity to lead American musical institutions largely because they were Americans, are storming the castle.

Skeptical? Within the past two years, Hollywood darling Andre Previn has become music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, born in France but reared in America, has taken over the great Pittsburgh Symphony (reportedly at a salary between $700,000 and $1 million a year, making him the highest paid conductor in the United States); and Leon Fleisher, the brilliant American pianist whose right-hand paralysis nearly wrecked his performing career 20 years ago, has re-emerged as artistic director of the Tanglewood Festival, summer home of the Boston Symphony.

Still not convinced? Gerard Schwarz, the trumpet virtuoso who seems as comfortable on the pages of People magazine as he is in white tie and tails, recently became music director of the Seattle Symphony. Joseph Silverstein, for 25 years the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, has stepped into the spotlight of the Utah Symphony as its music director.

And even Chicago`s Lyric Opera, long considered one of America`s more conservative and lofty musical bastions, this season threw open its gates to four American guest conductors, an unprecedented move that brought triumphant Lyric debuts for the two big names in the lot, Los Angeles-born Michael Tilson Thomas (conducting La Boheme) and Leonard Slatkin (The Magic Flute).

Clearly, the revolution is upon us.

``It`s unbelievable what American conductors are allowed to do now that we couldn`t do just 10 years ago,`` says Slatkin, who over the past eight years as music director of the St. Louis Symphony has won widespread praise for his innovative programming and recording, particularly of American music.

``Even in Europe it`s incredible what goes on now -- this is one of the most fruitful times there for Americans. Between Lenny Bernstein and (Metropolitan Opera conductor) Jimmy Levine and Mike Thomas and Previn and Maazel and me, we`re practically running the place.``

But as Slatkin and his American colleagues remember all too well, it was not always thus. Until recently, being an American conductor was practically considered a contradiction in terms.

``While I was trying to make my way as a young conductor in the `40s and `50s, the idea that an American could conduct anything was considered totally grotesque,`` says Maazel, who developed his early career in Europe. ``I came from a period when to make a career in classical music in the United States, as an American, was totally out of the question.

``Had I (as a brilliant child prodigy) been Dutch, I would have been seated next to the Queen of Holland in my middle 20s. Here in the States they couldn`t have cared less whether I was dead or alive. And the Europeans felt musical culture was their private hunting ground, that European music belonged to Europeans.``

That sentiment has long been the nemesis of American conductors. Except for a few lucky and gifted individuals -- Thomas Schippers conducting the Cincinnati Symphony in the `70s, Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic in the `60s -- major musical posts in the United States were not considered the province of Americans.

At one point, it might have been argued, that made sense, for U.S. musical culture at the beginning of this century was in need of all the help it could get.

``I became depressed by music in America,`` wrote the late pianist Arthur Rubinstein in his biography My Young Years, recounting his first U.S. tour in 1906. ``When an interviewer asked me about my impressions of America, I gave him the usual banal answers: `great country, in full progress, fine hotels, good orchestras,` but I had to think about what my impressions really were for a long while.

``The greatest part of the America which I had seen in 1906 was ugly. Concert audiences, in general, were still living under the regime of the crude, big- drum publicity used by the old Barnum system. To quote Jenny Lind`s title as `the Swedish Nightingale` made her more popular than her singing. Paderewski`s lion`s face with the golden hair and his personal train became a symbol -- people would wait a whole night near the railway tracks to see his train pass, but wouldn`t make the slightest effort to hear him play.``

Into this carnival came the great maestros of Europe, who in short order turned everything around. Leopold Stokowski made excellent recordings with his orchestra in Houston, Texas (or, as he called it: ``Hoo-sten Tay-hahs``) and built the Philadelphia Orchestra into one of the world`s greats. Serge Koussevitzky nurtured the Boston Symphony into one of the premiere interpreters of 20th century music.